Sister Dear
Fiction, Women's Fiction, Commercial Fiction
Josefa and Karla, two sisters, both widowed, have been living together in their parents’ flat in Vienna for many years. Their relationship is alternately loving and bitchy – as is to be expected in women with very different characters who are growing old. Inevitably they sometimes get on each other’s nerves, and accuse each other of being bossy and a know-it-all. While Karla, who suffers from swollen legs, spends her time sifting through old photos and learning to speak in anagrams, Sefa is in charge of the shopping and housekeeping. Occasionally they go to the cemetery together, to look after their parents and husbands’ graves.
Then one day a granddaughter of Karla’s, who lives in America, remembers her Austrian roots and starts asking questions. This brings a breath of fresh air and some disruption into the old ladies’ rather humdrum existence. Their memories of the past do not always coincide, and inevitably, arguments ensue. But the deeper they become submerged in the past, the less the trivial everyday aches and pains seem to matter, and they begin to live more and more in the present. One fine day, as a result of this change of outlook, they make the acquaintance of an old gentleman who awakens unexpected feelings …
A wonderfully humorous novel about two sisters and life and love in old age.
The author Renate Welsh lives and works in Vienna. Apart from the three books on vampires she has written for dtv, she has published a great number of other books for children and young adults.
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Josefa and Karla, two sisters, both widowed, have been living together in their parents’ flat in Vienna for many years. Their relationship is alternately loving and bitchy – as is to be expected in women with very different characters who are growing old. Inevitably they sometimes get on each other’s nerves, and accuse each other of being bossy and a know-it-all. While Karla, who suffers from swollen legs, spends her time sifting through old photos and learning to speak in anagrams, Sefa is in charge of the shopping and housekeeping. Occasionally they go to the cemetery together, to look after their parents and husbands’ graves.
Then one day a granddaughter of Karla’s, who lives in America, remembers her Austrian roots and starts asking questions. This brings a breath of fresh air and some disruption into the old ladies’ rather humdrum existence. Their memories of the past do not always coincide, and inevitably, arguments ensue. But the deeper they become submerged in the past, the less the trivial everyday aches and pains seem to matter, and they begin to live more and more in the present. One fine day, as a result of this change of outlook, they make the acquaintance of an old gentleman who awakens unexpected feelings …
A wonderfully humorous novel about two sisters and life and love in old age.